Brown’s Lost Symbol already pirated
By Paul Biba
That’s what the Guardian is reporting. Is anyone surprised? I think not!
Pirated copies of Dan Brown’s new Robert Langdon thriller The Lost Symbol have started appearing across the internet only a day after the book was published.
The book’s UK publisher Transworld said it was aware of the transgressions and was taking action to have the illegal downloads removed. “It is available on a number of pirate sites,” said associate publicity director Alison Barrow, who added that the publisher was asking websites to take down digital copies of the book. “We are not being complacent about this,” she said. “It’s only the US version so far.”
The Lost Symbol was available for download via peer-to-peer sites including The Pirate Bay and Scribd.com on Wednesday morning. “Thank you so much! You just made my day.
” said one Scribd user, while another requested that the book file be sent to their email. …
Technorati Tags:
copyright, file sharing, Paul Biba, publishing
September 16th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Surprised? No. Disappointed? Of course.
Every time a book is pirated, the soul of the author darkens a bit. Eventually, they will have a soul as black as that of Harlan Ellison’s. Why some people want more authors with Harlan Ellison’s light-stealing soul is well beyond me.
September 16th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Electronic versions of ==The Lost Symbol== have been found on Pirate Bay and on Scribd.
Scrbd is no longer a free-for-all document sharing service, they are trying to build a legitimate ebook-selling site. Scribd has responded already:
With Pirate Bay, good luck.
September 16th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I don’t know that this is really as big a problem as it seems to be. Cory Doctorow distributes e-book copies of his print books for free and says that it ends up increasing the sales of the print books. Even though Brown and his publishing company aren’t offering this, it should still increase publicity for the book. I mean, the fact the places are covering the pirating story are basically free publicity for the book.
September 16th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Whilst I do not condone this pirating, I understand it. I live in a country that has draconian copyright laws and am unable to purchase a lot of books that are sold overseas, so as to protect our local Australian publishers and authors. Because we dont have a large E-Book market it seems that hardly any books are not made available for sale in electronic format. If a book is printed in this country by our local publishers and printers we can not purchase the book internationally in any format. I assume that this would be happening in other countries as well, and to me the next logical step is to investigate other means of obtaining the book. The publishers need to take a good look at why is a book on the pirate sites so fast. The printed version of the lost symbols sells for over $50.00 in Australia…… Hello…… and they wonder why a Pirate version has become popular. Go figure.
September 16th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
I have mixed feelings about this. I purchased three copies of the book, fair and square (ereader, Sony + the hardcover) – but I wouldn’t mind having a text-based electronic version as well – that way, I can do what I want with the content, i.e. convert it to another format, etc. I think a smart publisher should at least give a purchaser access to an HTML or PDF version (non-DRM, that is)
By the way, the book is a corker ! I read the Sony version into the wee hours last night, and it was so WORTH IT …
September 16th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I’m not surprised… but I’m going to be purchasing the ebook next week (waiting to see if a Mobi version is going to be available and if not, then picking up the EPUB version). I’m happy to pay for any book that I want to read.
September 16th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
May I suggest that you just get the ePub version, Don? It’s a better format than Mobi and easily convertible should you need to do so. Well, that is assuming you strip the DRM. Which is also easy to do.
The Lost Symbol was actually pirated the DAY OF. I saw it available within a couple hours of its release. It seemed to me that someone downloaded it, stripped the DRM, and converted it to different formats. It appears to have been downloaded as a LIT and converted to HTML and ePub. I downloaded the ePub and for whatever reason the format of the book looked a little messy. I looked inside the ePub archive and saw that it was converted with Calibre (how happy it must make Kovid to know his software is being used for piracy). So instead of just using LITConverter, someone must have used Calibre to convert to ePub. Wasn’t the best result. After just checking again, I see that the commercial ePub has been cracked and offered up for free.
Just thought that info might be interesting for some. And if you’re thinking about posting something accusatory along the lines of “OMG PIRATE!” I will let you know that I have deleted the book. I was only interested in how fast the book was pirated and if the copy was the real deal (the Harry Potter books dealt with a lot of fakes popping up around the internet before their releases). Besides, I really hate Dan Brown.
September 16th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Tony,
It seems none of the various types of media wants Australian money. They all do this. So I’d suggest obliging their suggestion, and not giving them any.
September 17th, 2009 at 12:12 am
Random House announced it sold 1M+ (that’s million) copies Tuesday, so Dan Brown and his publishers laugh the piracy all the way to the bank
Obscurity kills not piracy as books go…
October 12th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
http://www.thejohnfox.com/bookfox/2009/09/dan-brown-the-lost-symbol-reviews.html?cid=6a00d834526c3e69e20120a5de6e5e970c